I was rather saddened to hear about the passing of John Hughes last week. Although the films he was associated with are part of the 1980’s cultural landscape, my appreciation of them as cultural artifacts was not reflected until I was a little older. Part of it had to do with my not “getting” a lot of the angst that these kids who appeared in my mind to have things kinda going well for them were expressing. It is only now as an adult do I see that there was an undercurrent and parallel from what these teens encountered in their suburban paradises that the youth in the 1950s experienced. At that time, films like The Wild One or Rebel Without a Cause were the order of expressing a dissatisfaction and quite rebellion that lead to the turbulent upheaval of the 1960s. I was reminded of this when I just a couple of days before his untimely death watching The Breakfast Club. And who can forget the”I wish playing hooky was just like that” romp which is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
In short, Hughes’ films in their own way did reflect what the “Me Generation” hath wrought upon the world.
Here are links that are more articulate that I can be about the impact that John Hughes had on art and society in reflecting the society that he saw.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/aug/07/john-hughes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/aug/10/john-hughes
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-0811-hughes-musicaug11,0,1801948.story
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